OTTAWA—With Crimea neatly tucked back into the Russian fold, it has become fashionable in some circles to characterize Stephen Harper and his U.S. and European allies as a feckless bunch kicking pebbles at a bully.

Harper, they argue, is aligned with a U.S. president, Barack Obama, who impotently watches his self-imposed “red lines’’ crossed time and again, and European leaders who will huff and puff then buckle in the face of their Russian energy needs.

The Canadian prime minister, critics assert, is merely shouting and wagging his finger, freezing the assets and banning the travel of a couple dozen low-level oligarchs while playing domestic politics, bellowing at a Russian strongman to protect his flank with 1.2 million Canadians of Ukrainian descent.

There is much to criticize in Harper’s foreign policy — his slavish loyalty to Israel, his severing of ties with Iran, his back-of-the-hand to the United Nations, his uneven interest in helping persecuted Canadians abroad, his chilly relations with Obama.

But on Ukraine, Harper the hawk is really returning Canada to a more traditional role, working within an alliance and bringing moral weight to the table.

Those who decry Canadian inconsistencies when it comes to various freedom movements, uprisings, crackdowns are correct in the narrow sense, but no country, particularly one the size of Canada, can take on every battle. Mountains climbed must be carefully chosen and every country is going to face charges of hypocrisy based on mountains unscaled.

But it is tough to accuse Harper of using foreign policy to court Ukrainian voters unless Obama, Merkel, David Cameron and the United Nations are doing the same.

The Ukrainian diaspora has played a role in Canadian politics since immigrants began arriving under the Sir Wilfrid Laurier government.

It is why, under Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, Canada became the first country to recognize an independent Ukraine in 1991.

“I felt the burden of the sacrifices the Ukrainian diaspora had endured for decades seeking freedom and wanted to ensure that the cries of liberty from Canada — their adopted homeland — would be heard as trumpet calls,’’ Mulroney said years later.

It is why Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien led two Team Canada missions through Ukraine and why Paul Martin, became one of the loudest supporters of the 2004 Orange Revolution, telling Putin to keep his hands off the Ukrainian elections, appointing former Liberal prime minister John Turner to head a 500-member observer team, the largest of any nation, and investing in sophisticated exit polling to block Yanukovych from stealing an election.

It is why, in his most recent visit to Ukraine, in 2010, Harper played down the usual trade talk and instead sent a message to Yanukovych about the erosion of democracy and human rights under his watch.

“Canada will continue to support Ukraine whenever it moves forward for freedom, democracy and justice,’’ Harper said the day after the Yanukovych meeting.

Unfortunately, in their zeal to back the government of the day, Canadian prime ministers since Mulroney have regularly thrown their lot in with corrupt regimes, something Harper must be wary of as he deals with yet another untested interim government.

Harper has a role to play in this crisis, one that will require dexterity and determination. How he handles the next week could go a long way in defining his foreign policy legacy.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca Twitter:@nutgraf1

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